Diverge, A Texas Premiere

As part of its Orbiter Year-Round Series, Other Worlds Austin SciFi Film Festival is proud to present the Texas premiere of the alternative timeline thriller, DIVERGE, on Wednesday, August 16 (7:30pm) at Flix Brewhouse. Writer/Director James Morrison will be in attendance and will do a Q&A after the screening.

Equal parts science fiction and character study, DIVERGE follows a man who discovers how far he’s willing to go to return to the one he loves, and what he stands to lose in doing so. In the aftermath of a global pandemic, one survivor is given the chance to travel across time to stop the cataclysmic event and regain everything he has lost. To do that he must kill the man responsible for sowing the seeds of mankind’s destruction - his past self.

Diverge stars Ivan Sandomire (RESTIVE, MENDY), Andrew Sensenig (UPSTREAM COLOR), Jamie Jackson (THE BLACKLIST), features an original score by the Blair brothers (GREEN ROOM, BLUE RUIN), and took top honors at the prestigious US in Progress program in Paris.

“Diverge manages to take two tried and true SciFi tropes, the post-apocalyptic world and time travel, and create something new and exciting by their combination,” says Bears Fonté, OWA Founder and Artistic Director. “It also dives into botanical SciFi, a subgenre we see all too rarely, but which seems only one step away from modern science.”

SYNOPSIS:

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Chris Towne struggles to provide for his wife Anna, who has been infected with a deadly virus. When a mysterious survivor crosses paths with them, he offers Chris food and water, but only if he’ll leave his sick wife behind.

When Chris refuses, the stranger ambushes him and knocks him unconscious. He awakens to find himself in present-day, pre-apocalypse New York City, confused and disoriented, but he sees a familiar face in the crowd. It is Anna, healthy, vibrant, but with another man: a past version of himself. The only person standing in the way of the life Chris used to have is the man he used to be.

What would you sacrifice to reclaim what was taken from you and would you lose yourself in doing so?

“My love for science fiction began when I discovered the original Twilight Zone series,” says writer/director James Morrison. “As a boy, I’d stay up late at night to catch old reruns of episodes that ignited my imagination and left me with more questions than answers. And while the show fell under the genre of science fiction, the focus was never on action sequences or special effects, but more importantly on the story. We made DIVERGE with that same approach mind. We wanted the audience to feel the same sense of claustrophobia, paranoia, and confusion that our main character is experiencing as he goes from struggling to survive in a decimated world to this world on the brink of that same collapse. Science Fiction can spark reactions and opinions like no other genre. It takes ideas that are big and abstract and turns them into something anyone can relate and respond to. It does not require expensive special effects or monstrous creatures from Planet X. It requires imagination, and a desire to question, explore, and even challenge a concept in a new and exciting way.”

ABOUT THE WRITER/DIRECTOR:

James Morrison grew up making movies with his family’s video camera in Little Rock, Arkansas. While working at a video store in New York, he met filmmaker Steven Shainberg (SECRETARY, FUR) which lead to a job at Vox3 Films. Since then James has worked on several movies including James Gray's THE IMMIGRANT, Sally Potter's RAGE, and George C. Wolfe's YOU'RE NOT YOU. In 2014 he was a member of the inaugural Dogfish Accelerator incubator program during which he developed a slate of projects with his producing partners Noah Lang and David Mandel. His award-winning short films STAY TRUE DARLING and LITTLE BROTHER have traveled to dozens of film festivals including Indie Memphis, Little Rock, NYC PictureStart, Manhattan, and YoungCuts. DIVERGE is his first feature film and was awarded the top prize at the US in Progress in Paris. It is currently touring festivals domestically and internationally.